One of the nice things about Mexico is that the ocean is never that far away. On Wednesday, we decided that we had had enough of the cold of Pátzcuaro and fled to the warmth of the beach and the Pacific Ocean. Instead of spending the day cocooning around the single electric heater, we drove three hours to Troncones, which is about 20 miles (32 km.) north of Zihuatanejo and Ixtapa, two relatively well known tourist destinations. Instead of dealing with temperatures of 55 ˚F (13 ˚C), we are now relaxing in 86 ˚F (30 ˚C) temperatures and listening to the sound of the surf echoing in the background.
It is times like this that I think of my sister living in Upstate New York and chuckle sadistically. Their temperature has finally crawled up above freezing, and probably most of the two to three meters of snow has melted into layers of ice, snow and black ice.
Troncones is a surfing and fishing spot, and one really can’t call it anything more than a spot. It is the high tourist season, and there are only four or five people on the beach at any given time. The village must have no more than 300 people living here. Troncar means “to truncate,” so the name might mean tree stumps,tree trucks or possibly truncated bodies. But since the village was founded by a Texan, who convinced his friends to buy land here and develop it as a fishing port, I am inclined to think that it means “trunks,” as in swimming trunks. Too many Americans who don’t speak Spanish take English words and give them Spanish endings. This works rarely and can lead to very humorous results, as the joke goes, one woman tried to make the word put into Spanish by adding an “a” to the end the word and was surprised by people’s reaction. “Puta” means whore and is not said in polite company.
I spent this morning watching pelicans and gulls dive for fish in the surf. I have always thought that pelicans were somewhat humorous, particularly given the poem by that famous poet Dixon Lanire Merrith, who in 1910 wrote: “A wonderful bird is the pelican,/ His bill will hold more than his belly can/ He can take in his beak/ Food enough for a week,/ But I’m damned if I see how the hell he can.” The truth of the matter is that these birds are very efficient killers. They loft themselves from the ocean, catch air and then glide inches (centimeters) above the waves. They ascend and circle the waves. When they spot something, they break and dive into the sea. At the moment the plunge, you can see the knob at the back of their heads, very reminiscent to that of a pterodactyl, a flying dinosaur which ate small mammals is a single bite.
In the afternoon, we went to Zihuatanejo for comida, which is the main meal of the day, eaten between 2 pm and 4 pm. Zihuatanejo was a favorite vacation spot for us when we lived in Mexico from 1976 to 1985. At that time, it was a small fishing village that attracted mostly Mexican families and was comprised of small, funky hotels. Ixtapa which is just up the road was built for the American tourist market and was far more frantic, loud and plastic. In Zihuatanejo, we used to take a boat across the bay to a small sandy beach, called Playa de Los Gatos, where they had small fish restaurants in palapas. The beach had been a favorite of the Aztec emperors, who had a breakwater built, so you could so diving and see all of the fish.
Well, Zihuatanejo has changed into a city with people hawking condominiums and hotels, just as aggressively as people in Ixtapa try to sell time shares to the unwary. On one hand I am glad that the people in ‘Zihua‘ look happy, prosperous and well-fed. But it is no longer special, and everyone greets you in English. Of course, I am sounding like an old cranky man, shaking his fist and muttering about progress and the young whippersnappers. It’s 8 pm, so it is probably past my bedtime.
